


Queens

by rizahawkaye



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Assassin AU, F/F, First Kiss, Fluff, LGBTQ Female Character, Pining, Romance, Sexual Tension, Sloppy Makeouts, Sparring, bisexual riza hawkeye, hand kissing, in which roy is thrust to the side and maybe will whine about it in one of these drabbles, lesbian olivier armstrong, olivier has it bad for riza :/, oliviza - Freeform, wlw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-08-20 22:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16564316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/pseuds/rizahawkaye
Summary: “I hear you’re making my men feel a bit inadequate, Lieutenant Hawkeye.” Olivier stepped onto the mat, felt the cool, familiar stick of it on her feet. She assumed her stance, watching blissfully as Hawkeye caught on. “I’m here to assure them that Briggs soldiers are still tip-top, joint training be damned.”





	1. Expectations

**Author's Note:**

> a collection of Riza/Olivier drabbles bc they're my favorite rarepair in history. ;; i hope to turn you all onto them too.

“Major General Armstrong?” A warrant officer - Collins, if Olivier remembered right - was standing at her shoulder. She elected to ignore the boy until she finished reading through a report from Miles, which took a considerable number of minutes. As her eyes ticked off the final words the young man spoke up again, a bit more urgent this time, “One of Colonel Mustang’s men is laying waste to every sparring partner we throw at her, sir.”

At this Olivier turned to the warrant officer, her eyebrow arching upward. The only woman in Mustang’s party was that Lieutenant Hawkeye, and as far as Olivier was told the lieutenant’s talents lie with guns, not physical combat. “Surely not Buccaneer?” she queried.

The young warrant officer tossed his blonde curls about his face as he shook his head. “Doc is currently wrestling the insides of a sparring mat from the spikes in his automail, sir. He went for her and she threw the thing right at him, stole it from beneath his feet.”

Olivier puzzled over the sight of Captain Buccaneer being knocked on his ass by a woman half his height and weight. She could not reconcile the bearish man with defeat in hand-to-hand, especially not to someone as pampered as one of Mustang’s eastern pups. This woman, she resolved, was someone she needed to see in action. She handed off her stack of reports and blueprints and intel to the warrant officer, who gripped the pile in surprise like it might have burned him.

“File these away for me,” Olivier barked, shrugging off her coat. “I like them alphabetized and ordered by the date in which they were received. Screw up and you’ll be knocking icicles off the outer ledges for weeks.”

The boy stuttered his reply and slung a salute across his forehead. Olivier paid him no mind, her attention already set on Lieutenant Hawkeye.

Olivier decided the young lieutenant was a sight to be seen. She had pulled her hair into a tight tail behind her head, her boots and socks removed so she could move freely and easily about the tacky mats. She kept her slacks and high-necked military issued undershirt on, though it was stuck to her back and chest with sweat. She was downing a paper cup of water when Olivier flew into the room, and upon seeing the general Lieutenant Hawkeye crinkled the cup and gave a crisp, firm salute.

“Major General Armstrong, sir,” she said, “what brings you to our training?”

Olivier surveyed her spectators: most were her Briggs men, big and burly and somewhat put out by the woman at the center of the room. A few were sporting the early signs of bruising, some bluish tint to the skin around their eyes, a few busted lips, clearly part of Hawkeye’s pool of victims. Then there were Mustang’s other men, that Lieutenant Havoc and Breda, who were smiling toothily, looking as though they were in on some great big joke that no one else had heard the punchline to yet.

Over in a corner of the room stood Roy Mustang, a filthy smirk on his annoying, stupid, ugly little mouth. Olivier kicked off her own shoes.

“I hear you’re making my men feel a bit inadequate, Lieutenant Hawkeye.” Olivier stepped onto the mat, felt the cool, familiar stick of it on her feet. She assumed her stance, watching blissfully as Hawkeye caught on. “I’m here to assure them that Briggs soldiers are still tip-top, joint training be damned.”

Hawkeye’s arm fell, her brown eyes turning to honey as she flicked them to her colonel, to Olivier, and then back again. Olivier was concerned to realize she liked the way the other woman’s eyes looked. She thought they were undeniably pretty, like the lieutenant who wore them.

Mustang nodded his approval and Hawkeye crouched into her own fighting stance. Olivier made the first move, diving to the floor to try and knock Hawkeye off her feet. Hawkeye, though, pivoted on her heel, and Olivier caught a sharp kick in the back. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to cause her to jolt upright and lurch to her feet.

Hawkeye made for Olivier next. She twirled her body and swung her fist at Olivier’s jaw, only just grazing her with her knuckles as Olivier pulled back, and ducked. She hit Hawkeye once, twice in the stomach and the young lieutenant buckled. Olivier waited for her to fall forward and clutch her abdomen, but she didn’t. When Riza Hawkeye dipped downward, she spread her arms out for better balance, and as Olivier prepared to drive her knee into Hawkeye’s gut, the lieutenant dove for her superior’s legs.

Olivier toppled to the mat, her breath coming out of her in one short wheeze, her eyes clamping shut. She felt a weight on her chest, and when she opened her eyes she saw Hawkeye above her, straddling her, holding her arms at her sides with her thighs. Mustang chuckled.

Olivier could hardly believe what had happened. One second she thought she had the upper hand, and the next she was caught under the practiced hand of a very (lovely) capable lieutenant. The fact that this woman was Mustang’s began to sit like sick in Olivier’s stomach.

“Is that all, sir?” Riza asked politely, panting above her superior.

“Yes, Lieutenant Hawkeye.” Olivier stole a glance at the smug Roy Mustang, but his eyes were only for Hawkeye.

 _Watch out, Mustang,_ thought Olivier, _or I’ll steal this one right from under your nose._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was written July 5th, 2018 ! there will be more to come !


	2. Feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want them to kissssss but i can't figure out how to do that while keeping them in characteeeeeerrrrrr. if any of u have any idea pls lemme know,

Olivier was on her way to the infirmary. Not for any reason she’d admit, although Roy Mustang had teasingly made a guess out on the snowy shooting range.

You see, Riza Hawkeye had caught the butt of a gun on her chin. It was a benign accident, really. A Briggs scout had ear muffs pressed so tightly into his ears that he hadn’t heard the lieutenant approach him from behind, and when she did - asking politely with a touch on the man’s shoulder for a chance to adjust his scope - his arm reared back and the gun met her face with a sharp crack. Blood dribbled down her chin and between her fingers, falling to her boots to glint in the warm, fading sunlight. She cradled her face all the way to the Briggs doctor.

And it had been a while since then, and the sun had disappeared behind snow-capped mountains, and so Olivier went to check on the lieutenant.

Though she’d never admit it.

When she arrived at the infirmary-slash-the doctor’s office, Olivier was surprised to see Lieutenant Hawkeye bent forward over a small sink - thread and needle in hand, watery blood running down her elbows - in place of the doctor. She hissed each time the tip of the needle met her skin and then she reset her hands, repositioning the needle so that it settled more securely in her grip.

Olivier stood watching at the threshold for minutes until she said, “Where is my doctor, Lieutenant?”

Lieutenant Hawkeye winced and dropped the needle into the sink. The gash on her chin flared red and angry, even in its reflection in the murky, water-stained mirror. The lieutenant turned away from her task and saluted her superior.

“I’m not sure, sir. I arrived here and it was empty.”

Olivier clicked her tongue against her teeth in frustration. Her men knew better than to disappear from their posts,  _especially_  the doctor. It couldn’t be helped, however, so she gestured for Lieutenant Hawkeye to sit. Once she had, Olivier shed her jacket and retrieved the needle and thread from the sink, depositing them both into a nearby trash can and re-setting a new, sterile pair. The lieutenant sat quietly and waited.

“You are good with a gun, Lieutenant Hawkeye,” Olivier said absently, “but with a needle? Not so much.” She positioned herself in front of the lieutenant, who looked up at her with honeyed eyes, and felt her heart fall into her stomach. She was suddenly unsure of her ability to maintain steady hands.

But she managed. Olivier took two fingers and turned Lieutenant Hawkeye’s chin gingerly up and to the left. She could really see the injury when the light shown on it, illuminating the jagged edges and the deep, wet, bloody chasm that marred her face. She sat next to the lieutenant and poured saline over her wound, apologizing quietly as Lieutenant Hawkeye sucked on her teeth when the pain became too much.

Olivier held the lieutenant’s face in her hand as she pushed the needle through her skin and then pulled it out again, and then pushed and pulled and pushed and pulled. Lieutenant Hawkeye’s posture was firm and rigid all the while, until Olivier neared the end of her suturing and one of the lieutenant’s hands flew up to fist a handful of Olivier’s shirt. She didn’t mind.

“There you are,” she said, trying desperately to ignore the feeling of Lieutenant Hawkeye’s hand on her. She clipped the end of the thread and turned the lieutenant’s face to the right and to the left, attempting to eye her handiwork from every available angle. “Good as new, Lieutenant.”

The lieutenant touched the sutures, contemplated them. Then she gave Olivier a gentle a smile and said, “Thank you, sir.”

Olivier muttered something akin to, “You’re quite welcome, Lieutenant Hawkeye. It was my pleasure,” and saw herself out of the room before she could fall into warm amber gaze of Riza Hawkeye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nov. 7th, 2018 (':


	3. Sleepover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was impatient and tried the kiss earlier than i probably should have lmaoooo

There was a man in Briggs shaped like a boulder. Not the kind of boulder you’d see shoved up from the ground, but one that’d be clipped to the side of a mountain. Holding snow in its indentions and forming ice on its edges. The sun glinting off its surface, water rolling from the leaves of shaggy bushes over its head. **  
**

This man was named Buccaneer. Riza had met him before during joint training exercises between Eastern Command and Briggs. She’d flattened his ass onto a sparring mat once or twice or five times - however many it took for him to stay down. He was a nice enough soldier. His smile was wide and bright and inviting, and he always went pink like a schoolboy when he spoke with Riza.

And here was the curious thing: This shy, flushed-faced, rough-edged, snow-catching boulder-man never went pink for General Olivier Mira Armstrong. Not once, and Riza had paid attention as much as she did anything else.

And General Armstrong was small and fit and had strikingly blue eyes; the color of the snow as the moon rose over it while the sun set. Riza was calloused and toned, with severe amber colored eyes and stern facial features like her sharp nose and jaw. Although she supposed she had a softer smile than the general, but that couldn’t be confirmed. The Ice Queen wasn’t known for cracking smiles.

Riza understood only when she overheard a gaggle of soldiers gossiping in the mess hall. She allowed her reindeer soup to cool as she listened to them chatter, mid-bite. She was worried the clinking of her spoon against the bowl might be loud enough to drown out what they were saying, so she hovered it over her bowl.

A man with a young voice spoke first, carrying the conversation from the lunch line into the cafeteria. Riza could smell his food of choice, hot dogs made of wild boar, with brown gravy over sweet rolls. “General Armstrong got dumped,” he said, “and I’d bet money on it.” His tray smacked into the top of the table and he added hastily, “If I had any.”

“You really think so?” a squeaky-voiced woman pipped. “I sure hope that isn’t the case. The general went there to visit with her quite often.”

Her!

A third person offered, “Some people can’t handle the military lifestyle, even if they aren’t military themselves.” The three seemed satisfied with that and settled into silence as they ate, their utensils dinging against their bowls and plates and the hard plastic of the table.

Riza still held her spoonful of reindeer soup at mouth level, but with no intention of actually getting it into her mouth. She dumped the soup back into its bowl and thought rather hard about what the trio of soldiers had said.

Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue, she thought. But then surely someone would have corrected the speaker. Then she wondered some more, and pondered Buccaneer and his behavior toward her, toward the general, and finally it came to her, the big revelation: “General Armstrong likes women.”

Riza hadn’t meant to say it aloud. she especially hadn’t meant to say it loud enough that the gossipy soldiers could hear her. One of them snorted, sending a spritz of their soup up and over the edge of the bowl to splatter lightly across the tabletop.

“That’s disgusting, Warrant Officer McCarthy. Clean it up.”

Riza froze. She felt cold creep into her bones, dig a home there, and then spread into her blood, bringing goosebumps to the surface of her skin. She had been stationed at Briggs for a mere two weeks, yet that voice was familiar, so easily recognizable that she couldn’t remember a day where she hadn’t heard it. She turned stiffly in her seat to see General Olivier Armstrong, the Northern Wall, the Ice Queen standing over her, arms folded neatly behind her back. Riza stood to her full height and saluted, tried to regain her composure.

“And so what if I do, Lieutenant Hawkeye?”

Riza wasn’t usually so riled, but the general’s gaze beat into her, pinned her in place. A cold sweat crept over the back of her neck.

“It doesn’t matter to me, sir, I was only musing about things I’d heard.”

General Armstrong moved close - close enough for Riza to smell peppermint on her breath, lavender in her hair. “I don’t know how they do things in Central, Lieutenant,” the general purred, “but here at Briggs we don’t care about such trivial things as who likes who. We’re here to do a job, Hawkeye, not worry about which sex I like to fuck.”

Riza didn’t hesitate when she said a firm, “Yes, sir.”

-

General Armstrong called Riza into her office that night via her proxy, Miles. The lights in the ceilings had gone out all through the wall, leaving only the dim glow of floor lights to guide Riza’s way through the halls. It was so far into the night that Riza had been sleeping when Miles came for her, his jacket still pressed and gloves still attached securely to his hands. Riza shrugged her own jacket on, tugged her slacks over her pajamas, and stuffed her feet into fur-lined boots. She was groggy and tired, but she wouldn’t refuse her superior of a meeting, especially after what had happened at lunch earlier in the day.

The general sat straight-backed in her chair, her pen gliding over papers stacked in front of her. She kept them moving with a proficiency Riza wished Roy would adopt. She didn’t lift her head to greet Riza when Miles offered her a seat opposite the general.

“Thank you, Miles. You’re dismissed,” she said cooly.

Miles left them without a word.

It wasn’t that Riza felt uneasy being alone with the general, but that the general continued to pretend Riza didn’t exist until she had finished with her stack of papers, which took a solid block of fifteen minutes. Riza felt her eyes droop more than once while she waited, and started each time her head had tried to dip. She finally looked up into the blue eyes of her superior, who looked as though she had slept twenty-four hours when the reality was that Riza hadn’t noticed her absence in nearly thirty-six. Only a monster could stay awake for thirty-six hours and still be so fun to look at, Riza whined.

“I do truly hope there will be no problems between us, Lieutenant Hawkeye.”

It took Riza a minute too long to realize the general was talking about the lunchroom incident.

“I had been admittedly elated when Bradley had you transferred here,” the Ice Queen went on. “You are a fine marksman, an observant woman, and an exemplary soldier. However I hadn’t accounted for you being ignorant, Hawkeye.”

Riza had been listening passively, but at this she furrowed her brows. “With all due respect, sir,” she started carefully, “I truly was thinking out loud on what I had heard being discussed among soldiers in the mess hall. It was all benign conversation, really, and I don’t care who you are attracted to, sir.”

The general sat back in her chair, fingers folding together under her chin. She looked Riza up and down, took in her disheveled frame and the wheat-blonde hair sticking up in odd places. Riza felt suddenly very small in her seat on the other side of the general’s desk. She wished she could have taken a shower, combed her hair, dressed properly. General Armstrong stood. Then she rounded her desk, then she supported her weight with a hand on its corner and bent forward until her nose was inches from Riza’s. The two women regarded one another, curious, until the Northern Wall spoke:

“That’s good to hear, Lieutenant,” she said, “because I find myself fancying you in particular.”

Riza’s heart leapt once, skipped two beats, and then she reined it in.

Being attracted to women was always a part of Riza’s life. It was in her being, it was a normal, everyday occurrence that she lived with as easily as her attraction to men. They existed side-by-side, these attractions, like rivers and streams or quilts and bed sheets. She held women close to her heart - growing up in the rural eastern countryside was hard enough without letting everyone know you had crushes on your  _girl_ friends as well as your  _boy_ friends. And so Riza’s attraction became a secret, and it was one she held dear, and one she never thought she’d reveal to anyone but Roy and Rebecca, her first kisses, which she counted separately because she swears men kiss differently than women.

And Olivier Armstrong kissed differently than both, as it turned out. First she asked for permission; a small turn of her head. Riza didn’t protest, and Olivier’s fingers slid into the knots of Riza’s hair, holding her head in place. Olivier’s lips were soft, the softest Riza had ever felt. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew kissing her superior was grounds for dismissal from the military, but what was it Buccaneer had said about the north? What happens up here stays up here? Riza would ask him tomorrow.

For now she was busy tugging Olivier into her, rocking forward on the balls of her feet to meet her halfway. She cradled her superior’s face in her hands, tipping Olivier’s head back to kiss her chin, her throat, the subtle line of her collar bone. When Olivier again caught Riza’s lips in hers she moaned, bringing a surge of electricity up Riza’s spine. She felt the frenzy before it came, a hot mess of need that made her fingers tingle. She wanted to pop the buttons off Olivier’s jacket, grip the hem of her shirt and slip it over Olivier’s head. The desk looked inviting, the chair was too constricting, but before Riza could push up from her seat Olivier broke the kiss, stumbling backward a bit out of Riza’s grasp.

The two women broke apart panting, faces warm and pink, amber eyes meeting icy blue ones. Riza’s hands drifted slowly back to her lap. Olivier grinned.

“You’re free to go, Lieutenant,” she said. “I’d like it if you’d remind me of your room number, however. Perhaps it’d be easier on Miles if I went to you next time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nov. 8th, 2018 ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ


	4. Curious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first time they meet?????????????

“Ri, are you going to finish that?”

The smell of smoke. Someone laughing to her right. Fluorescent lights piercing her eyes.

Riza poked at the lump of meat on her plate - if it could really be called meat, she wasn’t quite sure - and attended to her thoughts. Though usually quiet, they raged this evening. Severely loud proclamations of her displeasure, of the myriad of sensations that assaulted her brain every day, bounced back and forth against opposite ends of her skull, pummeling her temples until her head ached.

She’d forgotten to remove her boots again last night, before she fell asleep. Her toes were cramped.

“Whoo-hoo.” A hand in her face, waving. “Are you going to answer me or what?”

A deep, raspy grunt. Then a woman’s voice said, “Can’t you be satisfied with what’s on your own plate for once, Jean?”

“You don’t gotta elbow me!”

Riza had whittled her grey-pink lump away until the prongs of her fork scraped at her plate. Her stomach rumbled. Chairs scooted across the linoleum floor, the sound far-off and muted, like a foghorn wailing in the distance. She was suddenly very aware of the fact that she was in a lunchroom, sitting across from Cadets Havoc and Catalina. Catalina tapped Riza’s booted foot with her own.

“You need some sleep, Ri,” she offered gently.

Jean Havoc’s cigarette was a smoldering white stick in his mouth, ash gathering like grey snow on his plate. She watched the smoke curl up and into his face, obscuring his vividly blue eyes, dulling them. Rebecca Catalina’s wavy brown hair was frizzed and still wet in places, damp from her run around the outdoor track an hour earlier. Her cheeks were no longer flushed, but the sheen of cold sweat still existed on her pale skin. Riza returned Rebecca’s boot tap before she pushed away from the table, grabbing a stray carrot from the corner of her plate on her way. She began to chew it before realizing that she wasn’t actually hungry.

“I’ll see you guys in the morning,” she said, smiling. It felt fake even to her. “And no, Jean, I’m not going to finish that.”

As Havoc slid the meat-not-meat onto his own plate, Rebecca furrowed her brows at Riza.

“Don’t forget that General Armstrong is coming to visit tomorrow.”

“I’ll be at the range bright and early, Becky.”

-

Riza toed off her boots, abandoning them at the edge of the mat.

She didn’t need shoes to be a good shot. She’d learned to shoot barefoot at the edge of her father’s property when she was seven years old, shorter than his most stocky rifle. She started with handguns, testing the firmness of them, feeling the weight of them in her small, chubby hands. Her father had painted red dots on the trees for her to practice her aim. He did it to keep her busy and out of his way, she knew, but that was fine with her. What else was she going to do in that big, lonely house?

Riza upgraded to rifles when she was nine. She liked the sound of them cocking. It was satisfying to feel them pull into place, to feel the jerk underneath her palm when she pulled the trigger. It left her skin buzzing with life. Soon she was able to hit all the jars and cans she placed along the railing on the back patio, and by ten she was hunting deer and rabbits in the neighboring wood.

She squinted at the sunrise, orange and yellow and blinding. Did she want to shoot standing? Did she want to lay prone? In the end she settled for kneeling on the thin green mat. She placed a round into her rifle, savoring the feel of the smooth, cool casing on her fingertips.

Everything was so quiet this early in the morning. Dew hung from the tufts of grass sprouting out of the breaks in the concrete walkway. Birds trotted over the tents, their feet making soft pitter-patter sounds. A car horn sounded in the distance. Gravel crunched and choked beyond the wire fence encasing the range.

Riza breathed in, she set her gaze, and she breathed out.

And she let the bullet fly.

And it did, right into the brachial artery of her wooden target.

She reloaded and shot again, again, again. Each time felt different than the last as she planted holes in the carotids, the inguinal artery, the sternum, and both femurs. It was oddly chilling to her that she learned to be so deadly from her father’s textbooks, and on the lawn of her quaint country home, instead of the classrooms of the military academy.

Riza was halfway through her box of ammo when her concentration was broken by a deep, velvety voice.

“You’re a good shot, Cadet.”

Riza paused to wipe sweat from her forehead. Then stood, and turned.

A woman engulfed her view. A short, blonde, stern looking woman with full lips and an angled jaw. Riza followed the line of that jaw down to the woman’s throat and over the wave of her collarbone. She saluted when her gaze finally settled on the epaulettes gracing the other woman’s shoulders.

“Thank you, General Armstrong.” She said, and clicked her un-booted heels together. The general waved Riza’s professionalism away like she were shooing off a fly.

“I want to know your name, Cadet,” she said. “And why you’re not wearing protective gear over your ears.”

Riza rattled her brain for a reason, but came up short. The best she could do was claim she was tired and forgot, which was the truth, and yet that didn’t seem like it’d be enough for the serious-looking woman in front of her. Her candor won out, however, and she said rather smoothly, “I forgot them under my bunk, sir. I’ve been shooting at targets since I was a child and getting used to the rules and regulations of recreational military weaponry use is an adjustment.”

The general hummed, shifting her weight to one foot.

“And your name? I was watching you through the fence, Cadet,” she said, “and I’m very interested.”

Riza’s ears reddened. The way the general said  _interested_  made her chest flutter. “Cadet Riza Hawkeye.”

General Armstrong fiddled absently with the shiny hilt of her sword. Riza had never seen a woman look so easily composed, like the world ought to move for her instead of just around her. There was a power in the stars embedded in her epaulettes. Like each one commanded a separate set of the universe; the sky, the oceans, the sands.

The scars cutting across the general’s hands were a confirmation of hard work done right. Her stance, the piercing blue eyes, her thick neck, the muscles protruding from beneath the fabric of her royal blue jacket were proof of a war fought and a war raging and a couple battles won along the way.

Looking at General Olivier Armstrong made Riza feel strong, comfortable. Safe.

“That is an apt name, Cadet Hawkeye.”

_Oh_ , and Riza liked the way the general said her name.

“I’ll be sure to remember it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nov. 13th, 2018


	5. Cliffs Edge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for @tomochingus on Tumblr! this is part of a multichap AU fic i've been sitting on for quite some time. hopefully i'll get to write it in this century!

The streets were cold tonight. So cold that Riza could feel it bleeding into her feet through the soles of her shoes. So cold that the blood congealing on the left corner of her mouth began to crystallize. So cold that her breaths came out as steam. **  
**

She edged closer to the road. Something about North City and its coldness captivated her, even as her ears stung in the wind. She covered them with the collar of her coat and tipped her head back to look into the black sky freckled with stars. She couldn’t see the moon. She could never see the moon on nights like these.

A car sat idle and empty at the curb. It was black with silver trim, glinting underneath the starlight.

A woman was in the front seat. Riza could make out the sharp jut of her jaw from the lamplight above. The soft curve of her nose, the fullness of her lips. And she swore she saw blue through the tinted windows. Icy blue eyes fixing on her, piercing through the night and the cold. Olivier was used to pinning everyone in place with those striking eyes, but not Riza. Never Riza.

Her boots crunched over a dusting of ice as she went to the black car. Her hands still buzzed from the shot of her last kill, and every instinct she had told her to  _run run run_. But the car door was unlocked, and the wind had started to burn her cheeks, so she let herself inside. Wind swept into the car and washed over Olivier, and she settled deeper into her coat in response.

Riza wasn’t interested in people, or in the things they found important. She was interested in doing what Hakuro told her to do, had programmed her to do. But something about Olivier was disarming. Riza felt a power sprawling inside of the Amestrian agent, like a flame that licked and whipped inside a lantern. She was drawn inexorably to it. A moth or a lost soul.

Riza shut the door; Olivier locked it.

Riza thumbed at the blood on her lip. It tugged uncomfortably on the break in her skin there, right where she’d been hit with the butt of her target’s gun. It would leave a bruise.

She felt warm, nimble fingers touch her jaw.

“What happened?” They didn’t leave.

“He was waiting for me,” Riza said. She never quite could figure out why she answered Olivier’s questions. She didn’t belong to Olivier. She was permitted to share herself with no one, and yet she teased high treason like it was a dog. She played fetch with it. She found it rummaging in her yard and collared it, and gave it a bed and a bowl of water. It would never leave. It would be forever printed on her skin, like the heat of Olivier’s fingers.

“Who?”

Olivier was closer when Riza turned to face her, so close their noses almost touched.

“This is illegal,” she said.  _High treason._

“I would never let them touch you.”

Riza believed her. Oh, she believed her. And it terrified her. The thought of Olivier - her soft hands and plump hips and sweet mouth - plummeting into the depths of the elite such as Hakuro, and Raven, and Bradley made Riza’s stomach knot. She turned her face and pressed her lips to Olivier’s palm. “No,” she said.

Olivier considered this. And then she swept in, smooth, and kissed Riza. It was chaste, and then it wasn’t. Riza was so used to their lips only brushing, to breath mingling with breath, that she gasped when her lips parted and Olivier’s tongue darted between them. All at once they were a collision of teeth and heavy coats and blonde hair. Riza’s mind hissed  _treason treason treason_  while Olivier whispered, “Yes,” into her ear like a prayer.

The world settled around them. Snow started to fall, but it escaped Riza’s notice.

Hakuro lurked somewhere in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jan. 18th, 2019


	6. What I Need

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this got a little saucy. i'm not sorry at all

Olivier didn’t lower herself into her chair, she plopped. Major General Olivier Armstrong doesn’t plop, one would say, but she did. She was alone in her office for what felt like the first time in a decade. Normally this would be a nuisance — because where were her subordinates? They had things to do so she wouldn’t have to do them. — but today, on this aching, cold morning she had sent nearly every hand she could spare to the top of the wall. She leaned her back flat against the high back of her chair, settled her feet flat on the floor, and flattened her hands over her desk top. There was a pile of paperwork on the upper left corner of it, looming about like a wild animal, and directly between her hands was a pen with which to tame them. She swallowed a groan.

Olivier’s men were fighting off a biting cold above her. Their snow suits would hardly protect them from the severe onslaught of ice and snow and rain, yet they peered down their scopes and barked her orders at one another until their voices grew hoarse. The morning sun hadn’t even had a chance to appear over the horizon by the time the Drachman soldiers were knocking against Briggs’ wall. Olivier had made quick work of assembling her finest sharpshooters and delegating them to the top of the wall, but Miles stopped her cold as she made to join them.

“Respectfully, sir,” he’d started, his red eyes alight beneath his dark glasses, “but we will come for you if we need you.” Olivier thought for a half a second that she should have him demerited for trying to curb her involvement, but it was clear that he was right to urge her to stay away. This was an arms battle; the Drachman were firing on the wall with guns, and Briggs was obliged to return the gesture. Besides, Olivier reasoned, this was nothing unusual for Briggs. Skirmishes between the Amestrians and Drachmans came bimonthly  _at least_  and this time Briggs was armed with a secret weapon. The most precise rifle wasn’t even a rifle at all. Olivier let her lip tug up into a smirk.

She could still hear Roy Mustang’s flat, “What?”

“You heard me, Mustang. I want to borrow your Second Lieutenant.”

“You can’t call a commander up and ask that he hand you one of his men, General Armstrong. It doesn’t work that way.”

“It does for me,” Olivier said. It was clear the young lieutenant-colonel’s fur had been bristling, and Olivier did relish in it, but truthfully her call for Second Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye was made in earnest. Ruffling Mustang was a perk. She hadn’t needed to call him, anyway; General Grumman had already signed off on Hawkeye’s temporary reassignment himself. But Olivier had wanted to be courteous…or troublesome, depending on who you asked.

Riza Hawkeye was a gift to Briggs. Olivier had made quick work of rearranging her office staff to include the Second Lieutenant. Partly because the woman was so adept at her job — any job, actually — and partly because Olivier couldn’t stop staring at her.

It wasn’t like Olivier to fall so completely for another person. The last time she’d been in love was the last time she lived at home, when she was in secondary school. Of course she’d had dates with pretty women from North City, and even some from pampered Central, but no one caught her heart as well as her eye. Second Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye was unique in that regard. Her eyes were brown, Olivier had noticed right away, and under the right light they shown amber. Her hair was corn colored like Olivier’s own, only it reached just to the lieutenant’s shoulders where it brushed the nape of her pale neck. Olivier hadn’t ever meant to, she never even had time to consider what she was doing before she did it, but she’d caught her own eyes wandering over Riza Hawkeye as the second lieutenant paced the office while reading, or walked in the halls, or stood enduring Roy Mustang through the phone. It wasn’t benign watchfulness, either; she even saw the woman in her sleep.

Olivier gave her head a fierce shake like she was trying to force the image of Hawkeye out of her mind. She could still smell her perfume hanging in the air, old and diluted but there nonetheless.

She sighed and pulled the offending stack of paperwork toward the center of the desk. Just as she planned to read through the first line of the first document, a soldier wrenched her door open.

“General,” he said, eyes wild. He was a man who had been stationed on the wall. His cheeks were pink from the cold, and his snowsuit was dripping with wet. Olivier stood, feeding off his urgency.

“Go on, soldier, spit it out.” She said.

The man leaned farther into the room. “Second Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye — she’s been hit! She fell from the wall and one of the alchemists caught her, sir, but we’re unsure of what to do.”

For one soul sucking moment Olivier froze, her nails digging half-moons into the wood of her desk. And then whatever had taken her let her go again, and she grabbed her coat.

“What do you mean you don’t know what to do?” she growled, getting into her man’s face. His round doe eyes widened. “You rescue her, you idiot.”

The wall was not in chaos, as Olivier had expected it would be. Miles stood behind a row of sharpshooters, his hands clasped behind his back. Olivier wanted to shove him, she was so angry. But she glimpsed guilt in his face when he turned to her, his chin quivering just enough for her to notice.

“What happened?” Olivier said. The cold was biting, almost unbearable. But she didn’t dare let on that she felt that way. “Where is Hawkeye? How could you be  _unsure_ —”

“You aren’t one to risk the safety of others to save one man, General.” Miles said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the whoosh of the storm. Snow cut across Olivier’s line of sight, blurring her adjutant’s face.

Olivier wasn’t one to risk anyone over one soldier, not even herself. But she pinned Miles with a glare hot enough to melt the mountains around them anyway.

“Where is Hawkeye?” she said again. Miles pointed with his chin to a break in the chain of sharpshooters. “Where is the alchemist who caught her?”

“Right here, sir,” Olivier whirled and there, standing directly behind her, was a girl. Her hair was as black as Mustang’s, her eyes that same almond shape. She was slim and sleek, like a black blade. Olivier recognized her as another second lieutenant, but couldn’t for the life of her remember the girl’s name.

“What’s an alchemist doing at Briggs? On my wall?”

“I was transferred last week, sir, with Second Lieutenant Hawkeye. Lieutenant-Colonel Mustang saw it fit, sir.”

Of course he did. He wouldn’t send his prized pawn anywhere unguarded, and somehow the spoiled Central brat had managed to sneak this one under Olivier’s nose.

“I’m also a sniper, sir. I know only the basics of alchemy, I don’t carry a pocket watch.”

“Do you know enough alchemy to retrieve Hawkeye?” Olivier asked, and finding that was all she cared about in the moment. “Could you bring her up or lower someone else down?”

The girl nodded once, her heels snapping together. The sound was lost to the wind. “Yes, sir. I can’t bring her up, but I can take someone down to her, sir.”

Despite the chill of the ice, Olivier shed her greatcoat. She removed the sword from her hip. She felt cooled to the bone, but adrenaline was coursing like a fine energy inside her. It electrified her muscles and cleared her head.

“Get me down there.” Miles seemed prepped to object, but Olivier snapped, “If you tell me what to do one more time, Miles, I swear you’ll be knocking icicles off the railings for a month.”

Miles retained his rebuke, like the intelligent man he was. Snipers covered Olivier and the young alchemist as the latter transmuted the wall so that it held notches in its side, and a bar along the length of them. A ladder of sorts, Olivier realized. She peered over the edge of the wall and saw Hawkeye’s yellow hair even through the white and grey of the storm. It was that sight that propelled her over the wall, and it was that sight that spurred her careful descent. Gunshots ricocheted off the steel of Briggs, hitting like hail on a metal roof. The sounds were vicious, ear-splitting. Olivier’s ears were ringing by the time she reached the second lieutenant.

The alchemist had transmuted what looked to be a large ladle sticking out of the wall. It was rounded, cupping Hawkeye on all sides, shielding her from the cruel wind. Olivier noticed first that the lieutenant was bleeding, just a pool below her left arm, and then she realized Hawkeye was awake and watching. Alert, even when wounded.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye,” Olivier tried to sound authoritative, but she couldn’t stop the relief from seeping out as well, “can you climb the wall? And your answer had better be yes, because you’ll likely die otherwise.”

Second Lieutenant Hawkeye had been slumped against one of the concave walls, but she straightened now. “Yes sir,” she said.

The trek up the wall was made harder by the second lieutenant’s inability to use her left arm. But the pair eventually reached the top of the wall again, their muscles and lungs aching, their joints a little torqued, their flesh a bit bruised. Olivier ordered Hawkeye to the infirmary the moment they stumbled over the edge, almost knocking Miles off his feet as he tried to help them. The second lieutenant went obediently, the alchemist escorting her despite never being explicitly asked to do so.

Olivier allowed herself time to warm up before she went to check on — no, to chastise — Second Lieutenant Hawkeye. Apparently, as Miles told it, the second lieutenant had broken form and moved too close to the wall’s edge so she could hit a target. She did hit them, of course, but her vulnerability meant she was pegged not long after. She and the alchemist both were lucky their lives were spared, considering the mess of snow and bullets.

Feeling had begun to return to Olivier’s fingertips by the time she found the second lieutenant seated at the end of a cot in the infirmary, one hand ghosting over the gauze on her upper arm. She was wind-whipped, worn. Her nose and ears were still red. Olivier hadn’t entered the room yet, she was just observing, but Hawkeye looked up anyway. Perfectly attuned to her own keen senses.

“I’m sorry, General Armstrong,” she said, and stood. She saluted. She’d been stripped down to only a white undershirt and slacks, her dog tags hanging down over her breasts. Olivier crossed the room in four swift steps, and hooked her index finger under the tags, reeling Hawkeye in.

“You jeopardized lives, Second Lieutenant Hawkeye,” she said. Hawkeye’s eyes remained unchanged from a moment ago, the deep red irises shifting in the light. “You jeopardized your own life out there.”

“If it’s the lieutenant-colonel you’re worried about, sir, I’ll gladly speak with him myself.”

Deep inside herself, Olivier raged. The lieutenant-colonel? She wasn’t concerned with him, she was concerned with — “You could have died pulling that stunt, Riza Hawkeye, and where would that have gotten you? Briggs eats Drachmans for breakfast, there was no need to act on your own.” She pulled Hawkeye in closer, not even realizing she was doing it.

“You had better start valuing that life of yours, Lieutenant Hawkeye, because it’s invaluable to others.”

This was when Hawkeye’s face broke. The levee gave way and she was flooded with emotion. Her mouth turned down into a frown, the light in her eyes darkened, morphed into the color of congealed blood. But her lips stayed obediently shut. Olivier was somehow very frustrated by her perfect second lieutenant.

She said, “I can see Mustang and I have finally found a common ground in you, Riza Hawkeye.”

Riza opened her mouth at this, fully intending to inquire about what, exactly, Olivier could mean by such a comment. Olivier took advantage of the lieutenant’s break in concentration. She brought Hawkeye the rest of the way until their chests were touching, and kissed her. Olivier gave the proper, straight-laced Second Lieutenant Hawkeye time to move away before her hands migrated into Hawkeye’s hair, holding the second lieutenant in place. She tasted like the gunpowder, like the lemonade they served in the lunchroom. Olivier bore down on the second lieutenant until she was seated on the cot again, her hands exploring the underside of her superior’s jacket, completely of their own accord.

Olivier gave Hawkeye’s hair a small tug, pulling her head back so that Olivier may gain access to the second lieutenant’s neck. She placed kisses along the cord of muscle on her subordinate’s throat, enjoying the way Hawkeye gasped and fisted the general’s shirt. Olivier’s mind was frenzied with want. Thoughts came to her as fast and uncoordinated as the snow in the storm outside, barreling against the inside of her skull. Over Hawkeye’s shoulder was a cot, long and white and inviting, and Olivier placed a knee on the end of it, right between Hawkeye’s thighs. She entertained the idea of tipping the second lieutenant onto her back, climbing over her, and dragging her slacks off her waist.

Hawkeye, however, stopped her ministrations. She slipped her hand over Olivier’s mouth, stilling her heated superior. Olivier couldn’t help herself. She pressed her knee gently between Hawkeye’s legs, and for one brief, glorious moment, the second lieutenant’s eyes lit up with need. Olivier smiled beneath Hawkeye’s hand.

“This is illegal, sir,” Second Lieutenant Hawkeye stated plainly, as though she hadn’t just had her hands on Olivier’s breasts. Olivier pried Hawkeye’s hand from her face but didn’t let go of it until she’d kissed Hawkeye’s palm. The prospect that they might sleep together, she and Riza Hawkeye, delighted Olivier more than she’d been delighted by anything in years. But it scared Hawkeye, and so Olivier backed away. She smoothed the front of her jacket, replaced the hem of her undershirt in her waistband.

“You’re right, Second Lieutenant Hawkeye,” she said. “I apologize for my breach of conduct. But I won’t apologize for what I said. You pull shit like that again and you’ll be doing my paperwork for me until the day you die, understood?”

Hawkeye smiled. “Yes sir.”

It took all the self-control Olivier had to leave Hawkeye alone in the infirmary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one day i'll write actual Oliviza smut. one day. i feel like i creep closer n closer toward it every time
> 
> Feb. 24th, 2019


	7. Steady

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the lovely person who bought me a coffee n wanted Oliviza in return (':

Roy was somewhere outside, his breath like white clouds in the frigid northern air. Olivier was concerned about time. He would surely look for her, and he’d do it soon — she’d been gone for close to half an hour, and though she wasn’t anywhere near him she could sense his anxiety rising like a tide. It flowed in the space between them: Olivier, intelligence agent and hard as the frozen ground outside, and Roy, a battered would-be war veteran with piles of grief to his name.

The hotel had been a hunch, really. Olivier broke from Roy to come here, to this place where she’d last seen her assassin prowling about outside. And she’d seen her here before then too, when winter was only a small promise that came calling in cool breezes and chilly nights. She was surprised to realize she remembered the room. It was small, encircled by a bed on one wall, a window at another, a dresser adjacent to it, and a rectangular cutout for the bathroom. She felt her past self lingering in the corners, in the cracks in the floors, in the faded green quilt on the bed where she’d laid that first night, thoughts of a mysterious assassin crowding in on her…

She might have spent more time reminiscing if she weren’t currently suffering under the sure gaze of a long-dead hawk. Something touched her chest, steady and violent.

“I know your name.”

Olivier could hardly believe she said it out loud. This woman in front of her was a doe in a forest, and these words were branches breaking beneath a hunter’s foot. But Olivier’s assassin didn’t move except to shift her weight from one hip to the other, and to press the gun deeper into Olivier’s sternum.

“Riza Mustang,” Olivier breathed, the metal of the gun cutting into her flesh, “Riza Hawkeye.”

Both names sent chills creeping up Olivier’s spine. The woman she’d been chasing all this time was the late wife of Olivier’s own colleague, Roy Mustang. She was the famed Hawk’s Eye. And she was dead, as far as the government and her husband were concerned.

There was a stack of papers in Olivier’s desk back at the office that chronicled Riza Hawkeye’s life like it were strung together for a biography. Her father was the famously unhinged alchemist Berthold Hawkeye, and he’d died when Riza was seventeen. She signed on for the academy at eighteen, and was sent to war before her nineteenth birthday. She married Roy Mustang the summer of her first year at the Eastern academy, and she was blown to pieces the summer before she turned twenty-one, just two years later.

Yet here she was, quite clearly alive, pink clinging to her chilled cheeks.

Riza Hawkeye curled a hand into the collar of Olivier’s coat.

“Not my name,” she muttered.

“Then what is your name? Because Roy Mustang believes it’s Riza Mustang. He still wears his ring, you know.” Olivier leaned into the pointed end of the gun. She felt a sudden wave of bravery wash over her and she couldn’t stop. “He’s why I found you that night in this hotel. You were checking up on him, weren’t you?”

Anger surged across Riza’s face and then disappeared, just like that. “He is my past,” she said.

Roy Mustang is Riza’s past. Olivier could have snorted. It was clear that Roy didn’t feel that way, but it made sense for Riza to, all things considered. Hakuro’s assassins were built like automail, like weapons or extensions of himself, pieced together with nuts and bolts, lubricated with oil and lies. They were deconstructed from human beings and reconstructed until they functioned like living machinery. It was clear that whoever Riza had been before dying in Ishval, it wasn’t this.

“He’ll find out eventually,” Olivier said.

“You won’t tell him,” Riza said, and it sounded like a snarl in the dimness of the moonlit apartment. Like an order.

“It’s been six years,” Olivier said. She was again taken by bravery and touched the tips of her fingers to Riza’s cheek. There had been a bruise there last time Olivier had seen her on the icy streets of North City. She ran her thumb over Riza’s bottom lip and remembered kissing her in that car as snow pressed in around them. Riza’s knuckles brushed Olivier’s throat where they held her collar.

“It’s been six years,” Riza repeated Olivier’s own words, “and I’ve moved on. I had to, or I wouldn’t have survived.”

Olivier cupped the side of Riza’s face. She knew what the answer would be, but she asked anyway. “Moved on to what?”

Riza’s warm brown eyes met Olivier’s striking blue ones. “I loved him endlessly. I loved him with my entire soul. Hakuro took advantage of that. My love became a weakness, always a weakness.” She removed the gun from between Olivier’s breasts but her hand remained fisted to Olivier’s coat. Olivier bracketed Riza’s face between both her hands now, moving into her assassin with a casualness that left her wondering what, if anything, she really wanted from this woman.

“Hakuro could have Roy killed any time he wanted. I let go so that it would no longer hurt to hold on.”

Riza was about to say something dangerous — something treasonous. Olivier could see it playing in the space between them, flickering into and out of memories of Riza’s tongue running along Olivier’s jaw, the windows of her state issued vehicle fogging with heat. The soft brush of Riza’s lips to Olivier’s palm, the urgent  _No_.

An uncharacteristic jolt of guilt burst to life in Olivier’s gut. Roy Mustang’s wife was alive, and Olivier was seconds from putting her up against a wall and running a hand between her legs. But it was also true that Riza Mustang had died. Not in Ishval, but under Hakuro’s thumb. She’d been snuffed out like a cigarette, and what was left was half-Hawkeye and a quarter Mustang, and something else.

“And you moved on to what?” Olivier said. She wanted to hear Riza say it. It was a compulsive want that slipped out of Olivier’s mouth before she had the sense to stop it.

Riza answered with a kiss. It was different than any of the other kisses they’ve shared. It closed something between the two of them, filled a hole where before there was an aching, yawning nothing. Olivier tipped Riza’s head back and Riza opened her mouth, groaning when Olivier’s tongue parted her lips. Olivier chased that sound. She worked her hand under Riza’s shirt and dug her nails into the soft flesh of Riza’s breast. Riza hummed into Olivier’s mouth, vibrating with want.

“What did you move on to?” Olivier said. She never lifted her lips from Riza’s skin, running them along her jaw to her ear. “If Roy Mustang is your past, Hawkeye, then what am I?”

Your future. Your present. It was selfish to want to be a part of Riza’s life at all, but Olivier melted into those warm brown eyes every time she looked to them. She wondered if that was what had sealed Roy Mustang’s love as well, all those years ago.

Olivier nipped Riza’s ear when she thought of love and her assassin. Did she love Riza Hawkeye? Could she love someone she’s known the name of for mere hours? Riza gasped into the dark as Olivier trailed teeth down the length of her throat. She imagined the pale skin there marred by anything but her own mouth and bristled, tugging Riza closer.

“I moved on to this.” Riza said, answering Olivier’s question. She meant murder and the ancient craft of slinking into and out of darkness, killing silently like a disease, but Olivier pretended she meant her. It was easy to imagine that Riza Hawkeye might reach across that invisible line and understand Olivier’s heart. She wanted Riza in whatever capacity she could have her, even if she didn’t understand the  _how_ or the  _why_.

Riza helped Olivier remove her own long sleeve, the material peeling away an inch at a time. Olivier made sure to kiss the bare skin of Riza’s collar bone, shoulders, arms. She struggled to speak when Olivier worked to undo the belt from her waist, her fingers skimming that spot between Riza’s thighs innocently.

“You’re my salvation.” Panting, Riza pushed her fingers through Olivier’s hair. She let her forehead fall to Olivier’s shoulder and skimmed her lips from Olivier’s jaw to her temple.

Olivier stilled her ministrations and glanced at her assassin. She wasn’t expecting to hear that. She never even thought to anticipate something like it.  _Salvation_. The word sounded holy, like it belonged in a chapel.

“Roy Mustang was my husband,” Riza said, elaborating, voice more solid than before, “but you’ve delivered me to my own forgotten humanity.”

Olivier might argue that Riza’s humanity was never forgotten but stolen, ripped off her like a fingernail or a chunk of hair. But Riza punished herself hardest above all others, even Hakuro. Olivier turned her head and caught Riza’s lips in hers.

Silvery moonlight streaked across the wooden floorboards, coating the room in pale blue. Olivier led Riza to the ugly green quilt on the solid, cheap bed. She sat on the end of it and wedged her assassin in between her knees, holding her in place as she worked Riza’s trousers down over her hips. Olivier had no words to match Riza’s own; nothing to say out loud that couldn’t better be said with her mouth, her hands, her body. She swept her fingers over the cotton of Riza’s panties, and Riza dug her nails into Olivier’s shoulders, bearing down to chase the promise of friction.

Seeing Riza this way was odd. Olivier had grown used to Riza’s sharp eyes, her icy stare, the ever-present frown, that quiet solitude. But this Riza, one naked and bathed in the light of the moon, was young. Vibrant. It was like she’d been living her life in varying shades of grey and black and white, and now the world had exploded into color. Olivier urged her down to the mattress, rolling until she hovered over her. She fit her knee between Riza’s legs and smirked when her assassin sighed, eyes rolling.

“If you want to know humanity,” Olivier said, tongue following the curve of Riza’s breast, “I can show it to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm rusty,,,,,,,i haven't written in over a week n i chickened out on the smut i'm SORRY,,,,,,,,,,,
> 
> March 19th, 2019


End file.
